Those famous or infamous 500 kilos of drugs. Confiscated before the eights month of the year is out. The criminals that lost them, who worked hard to get them so far, who       maybe planned to lose them, in order to get 5000 kilos through. The money the 500 kilos are worth is enough to pay for the needed police cars, for the much needed alcohol test kits, for the road safety, signs, markings, etc. Legalize it and sell it to those who buy it right flow anyway. 500 kilo stopped, 5,000 through. In order to stop it all it must be legalized. Take it away from the crooks. Take it in the governments distribution system, coffee shops for the ganja, marijuana, cannabis, hashish. Pharmacies for cocaine and heroine and crack. To be sold on doctors prescription only. Set a fair price and be done with it. The foolish behavior of the law at present makes perfectly honest people criminals and makes perfect4bad criminals rich. It drains enormous energy from the police, justice system and prisons, gives a wrong image to the youth and does not prevent the use at all, although the present law was designed to halt drug use. There was a time that alcohol was banned in the USA. Canada’s Seagram made its fortune by shipping alcohol to the US. Bonny and Clyde were the famous criminals that drank whisky in teacups and killed opponents in spectacular shootouts. The alcohol ban had to be reversed and Liquor became government taxed and controlled. Today the same is happening with drugs. Criminals are ripping each other off, even shootings and killings take place right here on our small friendly island. Because drugs are wanted. For various illnesses and conditions that are not described as such. Ask a cannabis user what exactly it does for him. He will hardly be able to tell you. A good feeling is as accurate as he can go. Years of criminalizing it has made part of the populati6n believe that it is bad. Bad for health, brain, society, work and what not. If it was, Europe would not legalize it. Holland would have stopped the use in coffeehouses long ago Lf it was so dangerous. No matter tat all is said against Holland, it has a prosperity second to none, educational Institutes that churn out doctors, economists, chemists and engineers by the scores. It is a small country that with a population of 15 million can compete with countries many times its size. Its drug policy is been followed by Switzer—Land, England, Portugal, Spain and Italy. The two biggest countries, Germany and France take a little longer but cannot continue to fight what others legalize . Canada, like in the time of the alcohol ban, now supplying the US with marijuana, is estimated making 4 billion dollars a year of the illegal  trade (see Time, 20 August 2001) Prime minister Patterson from Jamaica has explained to Washington that his country is now nbr 1 going to legalize ganja, regardless of the USA’s stubborn continuation of the unwinnable war. There is St. Maarten in the picture of international politics on drugs? Why do we not hear a word from our elected politicians on the subject, are they too busy quarreling over the separate status? That way they lose the chance to be the second prime destiny in the Caribbean after Jamaica is going to be lost. Our economy does not seem the priority with the politicians to have the power to condone the use of cannabis as they condoned the selling of sex in brothels.